About Us

Our work at the Center for Complicated Grief is defined by clinical research aimed at helping people with complicated grief reclaim their lives. Our mission is to improve the lives of CG sufferers through fostering continued innovative research and through public outreach that includes raising awareness of CG, reducing stigma and other misconceptions, and training professionals.

Public Awareness

If you have CG you may have heard people say “stop wallowing in your grief” or “Can’t you see that it’s time to let go of this and move on?” Maybe you are thinking this about yourself. Complicated Grief often goes unrecognized leaving people feeling self critical and hopeless. People can struggle for years, even decades, with this painful condition. Our most pressing goal is to increase awareness of complicated grief in the general population so that CG sufferers as well as their friends, family members, colleagues and acquaintances will understand this problem, recognize it and learn how and where help is available.

We use many forms of public outreach to educate people about complicated grief and its treatment. Our messages are on social media, in newsletter campaigns, community presentations and a variety of articles and videos. Our work has been featured in articles in The New York Times, Parade Magazine and Pacific Standard as well as a number of other lay publications. We have been featured on CBS News, WebMD.

Professional Training

Another one of our main goals is to train health and mental health clinicians to recognize the symptoms of complicated grief and to effectively treat the condition. Our work has been published in major medical journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine and the widely used informative website Uptodate. We have an active speakers program in which we provide numerous invited presentations, webinars and workshops each year.

We have established a rigorous Training Program to introduce professionals to complicated grief and its treatment in one and two-day workshops. We offer comprehensive training in CGT through assessment and treatment case consultation. We provide a range of materials for use in assessment and treatment and a number of videos to help clinicians recognize and treat CG. The number of therapists knowledgeable about CG and CGT around the world is growing as a result of this program.

Innovative Research

We have made a lot of progress in recognition and treatment of complicated grief but there is still more to do. We support research to continue to improve our assessment and treatment methods. We support studies to produce more effective ways to implement recognition and treatment strategies. We support research to advance basic knowledge of the process and mechanisms of grief across the life course including research that can help identify opportunities for preventing complicated grief.